Snoopy vs. the Red Baron is an open-source one/two player combat game, available for Mac OS X, Linux, BeOS, QNX and Windows.

The original Snoopy was a tiny game for the Apple Macintosh, with black and white graphics, but already almost all the levels of the new Snoopy/SDL were implemented.

Snoopy could be played by two opponents, sharing a single screen and keyboard, and although it had poor graphics and tough controls, we very much liked to play it.

While we learned programming, we constantly sought for simple, yet interesting projects. If you have ever tried to learn a new language or API, you will have recognized that the simplest way in mastering the stuff is simply reprogramming an existing application, without losing much thought on design and originality.

So my friend reprogrammed Snoopy, in Object Pascal, using SAT, the Sprite Animation Toolkit, on his Classic II. That version of Snoopy features a fully functional AI, network play, but only the first level ( weapons drop).

While he was at it, he also implemented a "missing feature", the bombs, for which there where graphics and sounds in the game, but which could not be thrown.

When I discovered SDL, I recognized that it would be ideal for the job. Running on Windows, Linux, MacOS, BeOS and many other platforms, it is my new toolkit of choice for multimedia programming. It took us several weeks to port Snoopy (besides going to school, but now the work is almost done, with only the finishing touches to be made.

I can only encourage everyone to try SDL; it is really easy and portable (if worked right).